“I’m sure.”
He ripped off his brace with a groan, tossing it aside and rubbing the red skin beneath. “Screwed up my neck. Whiplash. Had to do rehab, all that. But the bullshit insurance companies don’t believe you unless you look like Christopher Reeve, so my lawyer, he says I hafta wear the thing.”
He palmed a few aspirin and downed them, which reminded Nate he was late for his own morning dose. Removing the riluzole and antibiotics from his pocket, he popped them in his mouth, then looked around for a glass. Luis tilted the beer bottle at him, and Nate shrugged, grabbed it, and washed them down.
Luis took back his bottle. “What’s yours for? The meds?”
“Just some aches.”
“The worst, isn’t it? Not like when we was younger.” He paused, thoughtful. “I got off lucky, I guess. Coulda been worse.”
“Yeah,” Nate said. “It could.” He leaned against the fridge. “I have to ask you a bunch of weird questions.”
“Shoot.”
“Ever heard of somebody named Pavlo Shevchenko?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know a Patrice McKenna?”
“Uh-uh.”
“How about Wendy Moreno?”
“No, man. This one of those talk shows, you gonna tell me I got a daughter I don’t know about or something?”
“No, nothing like that.” Nate tried for another possible point of connection. “What do you do for work?”
“Auto-part sales.” He gestured at the pass-through counter, stacked high with tool catalogs and invoices pinned to clipboards.
“You work here?”
“Based in Torrance. But I travel a lot.”
Nate glanced around the small apartment. An antique L.A. Raiders poster sagged from tacks on the far wall. Pep Boys magnets pinned a variety of material to the fridge-Domino’s Pizza coupons, an airport-shuttle brochure, pictures of Luis on a boat with several bikini-clad women, a Pacifico, and a grin wide enough to show his molars. A heap of wrenches lay on the spent living-room carpet like a scattering of bones, something about them recalling Urban’s box of mail-ordered lock-blade hunting knives.
Nate decided to go at it directly. He took a breath. “Do you have any idea why someone would want you dead?”
The beer was almost to Luis’s lips, but he pulled it to one side, the skin of his forehead twisting. Then he laughed. “Ex-wife count?”
“I’m serious.”
“Why the hell would someone want to kill me?”
“I have no idea.”
“You talking ’bout this guy? Pablo Shovechinko? What the hell? How’s he know me?”
“I don’t know.”
With thumb and forefinger, Luis smoothed his pencil-thin mustache. “What’d you say your name was again?”
“I didn’t.”
Luis nodded once, slowly. He knocked back a last gulp and lowered the empty bottle to his side, his fist tightening around the long neck. “I think maybe you should go, homey.”
“Okay. But you should know: Your name was on a list. Some people are looking to hurt you. I don’t know why. I’m trying to find out. But if you can get out of town, take one of those business trips, now might be a good time.”
Luis’s eyes turned to slits. “Wait a minute. I recognize your ass. You’re the guy from that bank shooting, lost his shit during the press conference.”
“Nah,” Nate said. “Wasn’t me.”
They stared at each other, blinking, both of them unsure of the next move. Nate trapped in the narrow kitchen. A standoff.
Finally Luis shifted to the side, opening up a slender gap for Nate to exit. Nate slid past him, smelling the beer on his breath. Luis kept a tight grip on the bottle but never raised it.
As Nate stepped outside, Luis lifted a black boot and kicked the front door shut behind him.
Chapter 30
They huddled together at the boarding gate, trying to blend in with the businessmen and students, the families laden with diaper bags and cameras. Janie had bought Nate a ticket for American Flight 4 as well so he could accompany her and Cielle right up until they crossed the threshold to the Jetway. He had been in a continuous state of alarm, scrutinizing every face, peering at every cluster of travelers, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. There’d been the predictable LAX tangle slowing them down at security, and groups three through six were already boarding. As he watched the throng leak slowly through the checkpoint and onto the plane, it struck Nate that these could well be the final minutes he’d have with his wife and daughter.
For most of the morning, Cielle had remained leaden and, aside from numerous whispered calls to Jason, silent. While Nate had paid the visit to Luis Millan, Janie had busied herself withdrawing wads of cash from the bank and making sure she’d have full remote access to her funds, dwindling though they might be. It wasn’t exactly a long-term plan, and Nate well knew that if he found himself ensconced in another ice block come Sunday night, there would be no end of troubles accelerating to meet Janie head-on. Now she checked and rechecked her purse, her phone, her carry-on luggage, a nonstop cycle of small distractions that no doubt kept her from confronting the terrifying big picture.
The check-in agent called for group two, Janie and Cielle’s departure now one announcement away. Time was scarce in another regard: Nate had to get to that next name on Urban’s hit list, Wendy Moreno of Westchester, and hope he nailed down a connection to Shevchenko firm enough to bring to the FBI. The geography was convenient, Moreno’s place just a few miles north of the airport.
Nate took a deep breath and stepped over to Cielle to say good-bye. She looked up into his face, her expression blurred with concern. He felt a faint elation that, at long last, she was going to say something warm and daughterly, but she wiped her nose and asked, “When can Jay come?”
The sensation was a bit like having a battering ram swung into his gut, but he covered as best he could with a lame parental standby: “Why don’t you talk to your mother about that?”
And now group one was boarding, and they were out of time. He moved to hug her, and she half started for him, and they wound up clutching at each other briefly, like robots simulating a human custom.
When they parted, he bent so he could look at her directly. “When you were a baby, we got you home and we were gonna sleep you in our bed, between us. But you were so little and I was so big, I was worried I’d roll over and smother you or crack your neck. I was so scared I’d hurt you that I stayed awake all that night and the next, until finally your mom said she needed one of us to get some sleep, so we put you in a cradle by the side of the bed. And then finally I could fall asleep.”
Cielle searched his face. “Why are you telling me this?”
His thoughts roiled; he could find no clarity in the heat of a dozen conflicting emotions. The remaining passengers were funneling toward the checkpoint, an hourglass down to its final grains. “I don’t know.”
Janie nudged her. “We have to go.” Cielle started for the gate, Janie following, rolling her carry-on, Nate watching them walk away.
Janie got two steps, and then she let go, the handle cracking the speckled-tile floor as she spun, and then she was in his arms, squeezing him. “I’m sorry I never went to Paris with you for our makeup honeymoon and for all the times I yelled at you and for us fighting so stupidly and for the time I called you a useless asshole.”
